Birthe Piontek

Originally from Germany, Birthe Piontek is a photo-based artist living and working in Vancouver. She moved to Canada in 2005 after receiving her MFA from the University of Essen in Communication Design and Photography. Piontek describes her photography as an exploration of the individual; while her main focus is portrait photography, she also utilizes installation and collage to investigate the idea of portraiture and to what degree identity can be visualized.

Piontek’s work has been exhibited internationally, in both solo and group exhibitions, and is featured in many private and public collections such as the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the Museum of Applied Arts in Gera, Germany. Her bookwork The Idea of North won the Critical Mass Book Award 2009 and was published as a monograph in 2011. She was nominated for the AIMIA AGO Award 2014, and her recent project Lying Still was shown during the Capture Photography Festival in Vancouver in spring 2015. Piontek’s images have appeared in a number of international publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Le Monde, Wired, and the New Yorker.